


Collateral Damage

by Sann



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Worm - Wildbow
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Pokemon Journey, Running Away, Sorry Not Sorry, Victoria-centric, Why Did I Write This?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2018-12-16 05:28:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11822166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sann/pseuds/Sann
Summary: The first nail in the coffin was finding those photos. The riot in Houston was the second. Him leaving was the third, but the final was the letter he left.Something was rotten in the PRT, in the entire system, and my parents were at the very core of it.So I did what any responsible teenager would do. I emptied out my trust fund and left.





	1. I

Leaving had been on my mind for a long, long time. I wasn’t like that girl who decided to walk a crazy long, dangerous hiking path no woman had ever done before on a mere whim. Instead, I’d been mulling over this for months, almost a year even. And today was The Day.

I couldn’t contain the snort, because really, it deserved capital letters.

It was really anticlimactic in a way, almost disappointing. Movies had made it out to be this big Thing, capital letter once again warranted, that it built up to before _wham_ , leaving. But no montages for me, no epic orchestra playing in the background. Just me, standing in the hallway of what had to be the worst holiday home ever (a vacation home in Brockton Bay instead of the Bahamas was quite probably the saddest investment ever). But I was there nevertheless, duffel bag slung over my shoulder and looking at the narrow table that lined the wall on one side.

My letter was on there.

A fake account of how I’d fallen in love with this boy and had gotten pregnant and how we were going to be living a wholesome, organic life with no ecologic footprint somewhere in Mexico. It had to get them off my trail, make them look in the wrong direction for just long enough so that I could disappear.

I’d mulled over what to write for weeks before my parents had even agreed to let me laze around in the Brockton home unaccompanied for a few weeks while they holidayed in the Rockies. What to write? What to say? This was my third and last draft, the one after which I decided to fuck it and just go with that one. Because really, I already was the problem child. They’d probably believe anything I’d claim to have gotten up to.

Mind made up, duffel bag at the ready, I stepped out of what had been my getting-out-of-dodge headquarters for the past two-and-a-half weeks. My hands shook when I turned the key around to lock the front door behind me. Then, as soon as I passed it, I dropped the keys into the sewer grate lining the border between the sidewalk and the road. The keys clanged on the metal, but didn’t fall in the gap.

Lips curled up in a scowl, because _eww_ , I gingerly nudged them with my brand-new sneakers until they slid over the opening and fell down.

* * *

Every movie about girls doing something drastic somehow involved a dramatic haircut, especially in those anime Crystal and I sometimes watched. The heroine would, at some point but _usually_ just before the new training montage, cut off her long, precious locks because short hair tended to make movie-women more awesome someway. Looking at the floor, at the long golden curls that were scattered around my chair, I waited for that feeling of invincibility to come. For the rush of adrenaline, the feeling of _empowerment_.

It didn’t come.

The face in the mirror wasn’t mine, but it was. It had my chin, my smiling mouth and bright blue eyes but the thing that had made me _me_ was gone. The stranger looking back at me was as unfamiliar as the hairdresser I’d picked on a whim, _her_ golden hair was cut so short that even with a healthy dose of imagination the longest strands wouldn’t touch her shoulders. Calling it a bob was being generous. The only familiar thing in the mirror were this stranger’s eyes, looking right into mine. Blue and brimming with tears but _burning_.

Victoria Dallon is dead, long live Vicky Fisher.

 

* * *

Guys still turned when I passed them on the street. I felt their eyes slide down my jacket, pretty and very in-vogue but also _totally_ functional if the saleslady was to be believed, and then down-down my jeans (once again, the best of both worlds). It made something in my stomach almost flutter, weak but there, and I raised my chin. It felt _good_. Even with my hair shorn short I still drew eyes.

I allowed my hips to sway a bit more pronounced. Let them look.

Let them marvel.

* * *

DragonMaps led me to the building I assumed was the pound. It was a squat building, old and square, built with un ugly shade of brown bricks. There was no sign, except for a rectangular patch of brickwork a shade lighter than its neighbours. The windows were boarded up, and combined with the rotten patches of wood on the front door it painted a very unattractive picture.

The old me would’ve turned up her nose for such a place.

The _new_ me had no other place to turn to, not unless I wanted my fake ID to last less than a week.

“Hello?” I rapped my knuckles against the least dirty bit of wood on the door, then dropped my hand but _eww_ , no, I couldn’t even wipe them on pants because they were still _new_.

The door opened, creaking slightly, ominously, and a square face peered at me from the shadows behind it. Unkempt, hairy eyebrows partially hid narrowed, frowning eyes set in a darkly glowering face. An ugly man, wearing-

Oh, no. Never mind. H- _she_ had boobs. Not a man.

Still, a chequered cotton blouse and brown slacks stained with what I really hoped wasn’t blood made her look very stereotypically lumberjack-esque. Like she bought all her clothes in packs of 10 that were on discount in whatever shop lumberjacks bought their clothes.

“Yes?” It was barked at me, the girl’s scowling mouth nearly spitting the word out.

The eyebrows were staring at me, almost daring me to call my beautician and have her strap the girl down and rid her of her hairy creatures. She’d thank me for it later, definitely.

“Hi!” C’mon Vicky, time to win her over old-school style. “I was told you run a pound and that you help abandoned pokémon find new trainers? And that you’re almost always looking for people to adopt because you’re at full capacity and-“

_And that your eyebrows are an affront to humanity and please dear God invest in some day cream your pores are screaming at me._

The girl wasn’t looking very convinced if the dark line her eyebrows formed over her equally dark eyes was any indication.

“Lisa sent me?”

I didn’t know how Margy had met Lisa, nor how Lisa knew people that handed out fake ID’s like candy nor how she knew the best way to quickly and illegally obtain a pokémon. A first pokémon, mind you, because with that first one you could go get new ones from the wild, or so D- _he_ had told me.

Eyebrows’ face morphed, or at least her frown seemed to abate a bit. She mentioned me inside with a curt nod of her head, then pulled the door closed behind me.

“Lisa tell you the terms?” Eyebrows didn’t turn around, leading me through a dimly lit hallway, brown wallpaper fading in places and gone in others, until we reached a door. There she paused, and stared at me.

“She did.” I forced my lips to curl up into another smile, the photo-op one. Eyebrows didn’t seem impressed. The money I’d give her after our little rendezvous made my duffel bag feel unnaturally heavy.

“Good.”

The door opened, and the room it hid was so spacious and bright that I had to blink once, twice for my eyes to start making sense. It was filled with pokémon of all sizes and kinds, some bobbing in shallow tubs of water and others creeping along the walls. It was like that time I’d visited that day care up in Washington with her parents, children crawling up the walls and blocks littering the floor. Except there were no photographers here, just Eyebrows and me.

“Anything you want?”

My hair back. My parents’ respect, and a fucking chance to prove them wrong. _Him_.

Something stung, and I glanced down. My hands were curled into fists, my recently-manicured nails digging in the soft skin of my palms. Oh.

I smiled, award-winning. A smile I’d seen beaming back at me from family photos to magazine covers. Bright, wide, white, and with just enough teeth showing, eyes just crinkling enough. This one felt different though, sharper. Like knives. I liked it.

Victoria Dallon had only ever bowed before her parents’ will.

But Vicky Fisher’s parents were fictitious assholes living in bum-fuck nowhere Iowa, existing only on paper and hastily created Facebook profiles. She bowed before no one. They bow before  _her_.  _Me_.

I unclenched my fists, and let my lips curl up further.

“ _Yes_.”

* * *

My bag felt heavy still, the money switched for an innocuous red-and-white orb of some shiny manmade metal-something. Eyebrows assured me in as little words as possible that the thing itself was an older model, made before the PRT started assigning serial numbers and combining them to the trainer ID’s issued by them.

I thought of the pokémon it housed, the delicate cloudlike wings and its distinctive blue body. A swablu, dumped some months ago, by god-knows-who. Pretty and bright, she felt like the right pick. Even the name she came with matched.

_Gloria._

 

 


	2. II

Gloria flittered around me agitatedly once we’re out of the bus. I’d kept her locked up in her pokéball for the duration of the trip, and she obviously relished the chance to stretch her wings. It was quite a sight that she made, even in the dull grey of the lot where the TR2 had stopped. She was a flash of bright, riveting blue flanked by wings so white they put the overcast sky to shame. I suddenly felt a kinship with her previous trainer, even if he abandoned her. Her name was well-chosen, very much so.

I sat down on one of the slate-grey concrete benches that lined the mostly empty lot, settling in for a bit of people-watching while waiting for my uber to arrive. Some people were still collecting their luggage from the coach, and others were just milling around. Talking on phones, or to each other, or maybe waiting for their rides to arrive like I was. It made for a motley crew, a crowd of mostly young-ish people dressed in colourful sporty clothes with big bags slung over shoulders or resting at their feet. If it wasn’t for the pokéballs attached to belts, bags or straps, and the pokémon milling about I would have pegged us for some sports team on their way to a game.

It all seemed so mundane, almost normal.

A small breeze made me look to my right. Gloria had perched on the back of the bench, eyeing me. I couldn’t tell whether she was curious, hungry or whatever it was the look meant, so I settled for smiling back.

She merely blinked, then looked away.

* * *

My uber pulled up, and he helped me get my luggage in the trunk of his yellow Nissan. We made small talk on the way to my hotel, and I tipped him after he dropped me of. He’d been nice, young, if a bit dull. But his smile had been genuine, and a pang shot through me when I thought of a similar smile, dimples in one cheek-

My nails dug in my palms, and I unclenched my fists with a shuddering breath. I forced my lips into a confident smile when I approached the receptionists’ desk, and held my voice steady when I told her I had a reservation.

“Fisher,” I said. “Vicky Fisher.”

I collected my room key and started herding my luggage into the elevator. It was only a three-star hotel, so there was no helpful hot guy in a silly uniform to deliver it to my room. Once everything was safely inside the little square that would take me up three floors, I let out a sigh. Three stars and good reviews on TripAdvisor was still better than having to _really_ slum it in some government-funded pokémon centre.

* * *

There’s a restaurant a few blocks from the hotel. It’s relatively cheap, and isn’t that funny? The amount of money on my new bank account swam through my mind, and I envisioned it dropping to a cold, harsh zero. Only this time there would be no monthly deposit from my parents to bring it back to its intended number.

Victoria Dallon’s parents had money aplenty to indulge her habits.

Vicky Fisher had one mysteriously filled bank account, and that’s it.

The food tasted good, even if my thoughts swirled to darker patterns. It’s when I’ve sent the waiter off with a request for a post-dessert cappuccino that my eyes were drawn to the TV that hangs on the far wall. It had been showing a sports game for the past hour, but now there’s a news anchor behind a desk looking solemnly into the camera. I couldn’t make out what it was he was saying, but the footage shifted to show something else.

A long face, thin lips and blue eyes that I saw in the mirror every day. Next to her was a man with my blonde hair and an upturned nose.

I looked away.

The waiter placed my cappuccino in front of me, a small white ceramic mug with the foam artfully showing a little flower. I picked it up and brought it to lips, gulping it down as fast as I could. It burned my mouth and scalded my throat on its way down, but I relished the feeling, the burn, the slight ache so similar to eating too-hot pizza.

I tipped the waiter when I paid the check, shrugged on my coat, and left.

* * *

Gloria didn’t like the poképallets I got from the small grocer on the way back to the hotel, and she turned up her beak when I offered her some of the high-nutrition low-carb snack bars I had stashed away in my duffel. So I trudged down several flights of stairs and had to turn on Google Maps to find the grocer again.

 I ended up sitting outside a McDonalds at ten PM with my pokémon devouring a medium sized serving of floppy french fries. There was one other guy braving the chilly night air on the cold concrete benches outside of the building proper, and his purple quadruped that was either a nidoran or a nidorino had four empty big mac wrappers scattered around it.

The guy’s eyes met mine, and we shared a look.

Somehow, inexplicably, that made me feel more like a real trainer than any of my outfits and accessories did.

* * *

My fingers swiped left as I browsed the newspaper-app with one hand, lazily stirring my oatmeal with the other. Gloria was back in her pokéball, as the sign outside the breakfast area politely asked me to, and something felt off.

So I swiped and let my eyes wander from headline to headline, not really bothering to read any of the articles through. Hurricane here, politician there, economical something this, crisis that. Nothing of interest, so I put it down and went back to actually eating my breakfast instead.

The crumbled remains of my croissant told me how attempting to force breakfast down my throat really went, so I gave up on the charade and got up from my seat. There were places I wanted to see, or, well. Not so much wanted, my treacherous mind supplied, as _had to_. I was a trainer now.

* * *

Finding the nearest pokémon center proved to be quite easy, Google Maps being augmented by the physical signs that dotted intersections the closer I got. It was within fifteen minutes of walking that I ended up staring at a skyscraper, a tall glass monstrosity that wouldn’t look out of place in downtown New York, hosting an epic party. The sliding doors made little noise when I stepped inside and I felt myself relaxed once I took that first step. This was familiar, an atrium with a big centrepiece made up of intertwined metal bars surrounded by wrought iron benches and big, metal cubes filled with flowers and shrubs.

 ~~My~~ _Victoria Dallon’s_ old home in Washington had an entrance like this, only with a doorman and without a pokémon center inside. And guards.

The actual center was, for lack of a batter word, underwhelming. It took up the entire left side of the ground floor and looked little like how I imagined it would. I remembered the reports, the news coverage, the press conferences with their _speeches_.

I remembered what _I_ had said, once upon a time.

The old me.

 _Her_.

My smile felt glued on my lips as I strode forward, exuding confidence with every step I could as if it could cool the thoughts I felt _inside_. Living outside in, some weird new-age psychobabble lady had once preached, and damn if I wasn’t trying to right now. There was more or less secluded area with red couches centred around large flat screen that hung suspended from the ceiling. I sat down, crossed my legs, and _breathed_.

There were no shady figures lurking about, dealing in God-knows-what. No rampaging pokémon intent on wreaking havoc, lazy trainers endangering their civilian counterparts or even corrupt nurses selling drugs on the side. Just a small bunch of people, like me, lazing about on the small enclaves of couches and chairs that orbited the central desk with its absent nurse. Normal, if a bit empty.

This was uncharted territory.

My lips curled into something not-quite a smile, and I caught my reflection in the screen of the television.

I might be treading in unfamiliar waters, but _damn_ if I wasn’t ready to conquer them.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: I'm heading to the US next year (for the first time, woohoo)
> 
> Not fun fact: my horse injured her second leg, leaving her with two tendon injuries at the same time.
> 
> So I'm writing pseudo-angsty/angry Glory Girl as a nice way to get that out of my system. Thanks for reading :)

**Author's Note:**

> Hehehe. Oops. I'm sorry guys, not an update but yet another first chapter for a new story. I've written more worm, over on Sufficient Velocity, but this story is more 'casual' (more 'me') so this I will only post over here. Anyway, I went with Vicky's POV because I tried Taylor (and had like 2k words) but I feel Vicky is the better choice here. I feel her, probably because we're both blondes.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you guys like it :)
> 
> (and I solemly swear to update TECT and Deathless, for what my promises are worth)


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